“There’s a lot of truth in it.”
“Then all you’ve got to do,” said Krag cheerily, “is to treat yourself the way you’d treat one of your players—Benny, the fellow you had the trouble with, for instance. Just go out there, work, and keep your mouth shut. Obey orders, and let others decide whether they are right or wrong.”
“But if Baldwin, and the coach?” Larry hesitated.
“Rot,” said Krag. “Larry—if you’re right, no wrong person can make you wrong. In a college it is the students that decide who is wrong and who is right, just as in a government it is the people. The bosses can run either a ball team or a government for a time—but not with the public watching them—and they watch baseball closer than they do governments in this country.”
CHAPTER VI
A Friend in the Foe’s Camp
Larry Kirkland, filled with new resolutions and abounding with life and spirits after a vacation of work and play, was returning to college determined to recover his lost standing and to win his way.
He and “Gatling” Krag were waiting for the Shasta Flyer to roll down from the North and bear him over the mountains to Cascade College. They had talked of the summer, of the ball games at the ranch, the annual camping trip to Crater Lake Park, and of the hopes and plans for Larry’s success at college.
“Don’t come back without your C, Larry, boy,” said the big ex-pitcher. “Remember, it is more the victory over yourself that counts than the mere making of the team.”
“I’m going to try Bill,” said the boy. “I want to thank you for showing me my mistakes. I guess I was a pretty swelled-headed kid.”
“Was?” asked Krag, laughingly. “It’s all right if it is in the past tense. A fellow has a right to think well of himself if he does not let it blind him.”